Training Under Way For New Nuclear Plant Operators In S. Carolina 74
"Start thinking about getting your tinfoil hat radiation hardened," writes an anonymous reader, and excerpts thus from ABC News: "Southern Co. in Georgia and SCANA Corp. in South Carolina are the first to prepare new workers to run a recently approved reactor design never before built in the United States. Training like it will be repeated over the decades-long lifetime of those plants and at other new ones that may share the technology in years to come. Both power companies are building pairs of Westinghouse Electric Corp. AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and SCANA Corp.'s Summer Nuclear Station northwest of Columbia, S.C. While the nuclear industry had earlier proposed a larger building campaign, low natural gas prices coupled with uncertainty after last year's disaster at a Japanese nuclear plant have scaled back those ambitions." Getting a new nuclear plant approved is a long haul.
Not revolutionary (Score:3, Interesting)
The reactors them selves are chernobyl biscuis (/sarcasm).
http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ [westinghousenuclear.com] Commonly known as a pressurized water reactor (PWR).
The only thing revolutionary is the control systems. Its more digitized and automated then ever before. Personally I don't like this, not very warm and fuzzy about the US nuclear commission and the state of the industry. I would like to see other designs implemented.